We are the mods! We are the mods! We are, we are, we are the mods!
Bobby Beaton, Quadrophenia, and Playing Sitar in a Three-Piece Suit
After that night at the Jailhouse being witness to BJM, I went all in on mod. Through Phil, Sophie, and Mimi, I got pulled into the Montreal garage scene. I met the Kingpins, the Planet Smashers, all the players hanging around Stomp Records. But more than the bands, it was the culture that grabbed me. I discovered Quadrophenia and this film became my world (much like Dazed and Confused did during my adolescence). The clothes, the attitude, the searching.
Around the same time, I started going to DJ nights. The Montreal Mirror’s Rupert Bottenberg started a semi-regular night called “Snap!” at Petit Campus on Prince Arthur. Everyone danced to northern soul, rare groove, and all things mod.
There were many people on scene but no one could match the enthusiasm and eccentricity of The Kingpins’ Bobby Beaton. After a show one night, I went back to his place. Bobby was in garage legends The Gruesomes and a total music encyclopedia. He gave me a crash course that night. We talked about the 60s, garage rock, freakbeat… And then he started handing me books. A book on the The Jam. A book on The Kinks. A book on The Who. He was showing me the roots, the history, the DNA of what we were all trying to do.
And that knowledge, that context, that's what I carried with me into everything that came after. Including the night we finally brought the sitar on stage.
It was at the Jailhouse Rock Cafe again. The Datsons were playing, and we decided this was the moment I was going to bring the sitar on stage. I was in my three-piece suit, fully committed to all things mod, and I had this instrument I’d been teaching myself for three years. It felt like the moment to bring those two worlds together.
If memory serves, the song had a long droney outro. I figured the sitar could create this trippy, hypnotic thing. So I put down my bass, opened the case, and sat down cross-legged on the plywood stage in my suit. A hush fell across the crowd. The sitar had arrived.
I plugged it in. We’d tested it at rehearsal using an acoustic guitar pickup, and it worked (relatively) fine. But here, going through the PA system, I started strumming and nothing happened. Dead silence. It was the strings… sitar strings were not made for acoustic guitar pickups. So there I am, sitting on stage in my suit, strumming away and slowly panicking.
I’m looking around, not knowing what to do. Bobby Beaton shushes everyone, grabs a microphone and holds it up to the sitar and a faint twang was heard through the PA. Everyone cheered. And just like that, I became the sitar guy.